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82 Ereshkigal
Some letters from the secret Enochian language, used in Elizabethan times. This section is taken from the center of a
magic table used by occultist John Dee to raise spirits. (Fortean Picture Library)
The Nineteen Calls, or Keys, of Enochian were
used by Dee and Kelly in order to conjure the
angels. The first two keys conjured the element
Spirit, the next sixteen conjured the four elements,
whereas the nineteenth Key invoked any of thirty
aethyrs or aires. Kelly allegedly spoke Enochian
when the angels appeared in his crystal. One of the
procedures used during the communication
consisted of setting up charts filled with letters to
which the angels would point with a rod in order
to spell out messages.
After the deaths of Dee and Kelly, interest in
Enochian magic vanished. However, a revival
occurred in the nineteenth century through the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later
through Aleister Crowley’s commentaries, the
most extensive of which was published in The
Vision and the Voice (1911). Crowley claimed to be
able to invoke all the aethyrs in the Nineteenth
Key, and recorded his communications with
spirits and astral beings. Modern Enochian magic
is characterized by two main operations: invoking
spirits, and traveling to the aethyrs. Enochian
magic is best known to modern Satanists indirectly
because of Anton LaVey’s inclusion of some
of the Keys (edited to emphasize infernal connotations)
in the latter part of The Satanic Bible.
See also Aleister Crowley; John Dee; Anton LaVey;
Magic and Magical Groups
For Further Reading:
LaVey, Anton Szandor. The Satanic Bible. New York:
Avon, 1969.
Schueler, Gerald J. Enochian Magick: A Practical
Manual. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1987.
Suster, Gerald, ed. John Dee: Essential Readings.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK:
Crucible, 1986.
Ereshkigal
In common with most traditional religious
systems, the Mesopotamians populated the
cosmos with an expansive pantheon (some
sources say several thousand) of gods and
goddesses. Some of these were distinguished as the
patron deities of particular city-states, so that the
importance of various gods tended to vary in